


my love is a fever

by orphan_account



Series: sharp teeth and sharper words [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Castiel, Alpha Sam, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Anal Sex, Biting, Claiming, Fantastic Sexism, Happy Ending, Intrusive Thoughts, Knotting, M/M, No mpreg, Omega Dean, Omegaverse, Oral Sex, Scentmarking, Self Loathing, True Love, homocidal ideation, john winchester is a shitty dad, mary winchester is a great mum, soul mates, strange biology, strange gender dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 23:05:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5224409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's a feral omega, all sharp teeth and sharp edges. It's him against the world. Something's going to break.</p><p>(and it will not be Dean)</p><p>Featuring: brotherly love, self-hatred, John Winchesters A++ parenting, and how to be yourself. And, most importantly of all, how to find love in a black and terrible world. </p><p>And lots of kinky sex. Don't forget that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my love is a fever

**Author's Note:**

> my take on omega verse. part of a series -- next up is alpha!sam's struggling to grow up
> 
> was meant to be porn. plot snuck in. i like world building , what can i say

 

Three days after Dean presents, Rhonda Hurley leaves a pair of pink lace panties in his locker at school.

 

\--

 

He finds her in the playground at lunch.

Her hot, bitter alpha reek rings in the air around her. Like all female alphas she is tall and strong and long-limbed, her breasts flat on a wide chest, shoulders pressing at the edges of a blouse too small for her.

She sees him, and she smiles, spiking challenge. Her teeth are very sharp, and very white, and she pops those broad shoulders back, quirking the corner of her mouth up.

“Hello bee-atch,” she coos, echoing that Valley Girl drawl that’s so trendy nowadays.

The lace of the panties is sweating in Dean’s hand. It burns. It’s a brand.

“Thought you would want that,” she says, “since you’re a bitch now -- time to get knotted!”

“By you? I’d rather fucking die.” He aims, with unerring keenness, for the real heart of the issue: Rhonda fancies him. Wants him. And, because she’s thirteen and a fucking idiot, she has no idea how to display that affection.

“You’re not even a fucking carrier,” she crows. There's a sharp curl of hurt to her mouth. “What’s the point of a male-omega anyway? You can’t carry pups --”

She never gets to the end of that sentence.

Dean drags her to the ground.

The clouds above jostle for space, obese and clustering.

 _Fight! Fight!_ the chant spreads in concentric circles through the playground, and soon there is a whirlpool of faces.

Dean hits and hits and hits. His teeth lack that alpha-point but they are sharp, and his fists are better trained. They are stones. He is a decade-and-a-bit of training, parcelled up in the neat package of a fresh omega. He is feral. He is bitter and brutal and furious -- because he’s meant to be an alpha, he’s meant to be, Dad’s an alpha, alphas are leaders and Hunters and fighters and soldiers and fathers. Omegas are not.

Omegas are weak.

Dean Winchester is not weak.

A stew of arms and legs and cheers surround them. From its depths a girl cries, “He’s going to kill her!”

Dean does not kill her.

But he comes close.

 

\--

 

Dad drinks for a solid week after Dean presents. He never says it in as many words, but Dean tastes his disappointment. It is as sour and thick as vomit, and it clogs up the Impala.

Dad drives hungover. Dad drives drunk. Dad drives silent, and grieving for the son he wanted: the alpha-boy.

But after that week he comes to. He sits Dean down. Says, “Look son, this isn’t want either of us thought would happen. And being an omega does make you weaker. Doesn’t mean you can’t be a Hunter. You’ve just got to work a bit harder is all.”

 

\--

 

And Dean does.

Dean works so much harder.

He has to. You have to work ten times harder than them, be ten times better than them just to get a scrap of respect. He's got the fine, pretty features of an omega, and the light syrupy scent of one -- but he's not a weakling, he's not a bitch -- he is Dean fucking Winchester.

He trains. He eats a fucking shit-ton of steak, builds muscle like no one's business; by the time he's eighteen he's bigger than most alphas his age; and added to that is the killing intent his dad has stitched into his marrow. Dean Winchester's silent and deadly and cold-eyed, and he never snarls before he strikes.

Alphas posture. They can't help themselves. They're biologically wired to be show-offs, displaying prowess -- I'm bigger/stronger/better than you -- and as such they have a wide repertoire of warning-signs: bared teeth, lowered heads, the low curl of a growl at the back of the throat; the rumble of a snarl which sings up through the chest, shaking the ribs; the snap-snap of a pretend bite. They'll circle. They'll eye each other up.

But Dean? Dean hits, hits hard, then springs away. He never lets them pin him down. He's fast and he's quiet, and when he shows his teeth well -- it's only as a precursor to a bite.

He's learned not to warn.

 

\--

 

He has his first heat at fourteen. It is a hot, ugly itch under his skin; it is a thick weight in his groin; it is a longing he can't sate. He wants to be knotted. He wants to skin anyone who looks at his family wrong. He wants to taste blood; to run until his feet are naught but bloody pulp.

He wants pups.

He wants to _eat_ pups, pick the flesh off brittle little bones.

 

\--

 

After that hell of a first heat -- horror-images blaring at the back of his mind, frilled in red, bright and silver and real as his own flesh -- he goes on suppressants.

He stays on them.

You're meant to have a heat every three months or so. Something about keeping hormones in check. Something about not stunting growth.

 _Fuck_ that noise. A Hunter in heat cannot hunt; a Hunter in heat is worse than useless.

_A liability._

Every time he even thinks about going into heat again he recalls that first one -- two nights of sweat-tangled teeth-bared bone-shaking fever-flush terror -- nightmares so real that he tastes them, skin like tissue, feeling everything.

So yeah. He'll take the increased risk of cancer. The strange shivery feeling he gets now and then.

The suppressants keep him useful.

Keep him his father's soldier.

 

\--

 

Dean hits Sam once, and only once.

Sam's eleven. He's a few years shy of presenting -- and the fact that he's tall and gangling and bright-eyed means shitall, because Dean had been tall and strong and vicious and he still got the get-knotted call rather than the find-something-to-knot call so he's not taking bets and Jesus what would Dad say to two omega-boys? What would Dad say -- anyway, Sam's a few years shy of presenting but he's still soaking up the tired old stories in the way of boys the world over.

He doesn't mean to be a little bastard. He's just echoing what those shits at school are saying.

But still. He still says --

"She's like a bitch in heat, gagging for it," says Sam. His voice is a high childish trill. Later Dean will think that Sammy is only trying to fit in with his brother's tales -- Dean’s talking about Charlotte, a pretty beta, about how he wants to fuck her -- but at that point he only thinks of bitch and heat.

Last week, an omega-girl was raped in the woods behind the school he and Sammy attend. The son-of-a-bitch who did it claimed she was in heat -- gagging for it, basically mounted me -- and the alpha-girl judge let him off.

We all know what bitches in heat are like, she'd said.

Small town. But the story is the same the country the world over. An omega in heat is asking for it, must be. And those romance novels don't help: portraying all heats as a desperate quest to get knotted.

And they're not.

_(at least Dean thinks so. He's had one. That one was more about hideously violent imagery than anything else.)_

But Sam says it, and Dean thinks of the word bitch and how it has followed him since he was only a shade older than Sam.

"Don't say that word Sammy," he says, tense and quiet, violence thrumming under his words.

But Sam's too little to smell the quiver of anger. He smiles. He's got the most magnificent shit-eating grin -- he learned it from Dean. He still thinks that this is a joke.

He says, "But that's what they are --"

\-- and he's learned that from Dean as well, that insouciance, that ability to sing out sharp words, not intending to cut but managing all the same -- cruel words said with a smile, cheeky that edges into malice, the balance that is so fucking hard to get right -- humour and hurt --

\-- and Dean knows it is his fault, and that makes it all the worse.

But stil. Sam says it. He's got a broad grin on his face and --

And his teeth look sharp.

Dean runs his tongue over his blunt omega canines. Tells himself that he's being ridiculous, that Sam's far too young to present -- that even if he does become an alpha then he'll be one of the good ones -- but anger swells in him. It's a high cry, starting at his palms and running in a charge through his bones to his shoulders.

Sam takes his silence for approval.

" -- like an omega wanting a --" and his little lips form the shape of an n and --

Dean smacks him. It isn't a punch; it's a slap. And that's worse. A punch is an act of amiable fraternal violence. A slap is humiliating.

A line of bright blood.

Sam's eyes wide and wild with shock.

And Dean: simmering guilt and the stew of anger, and lost in this all --

\-- _aren't us bitches meant to like kids?_

 

\--

 

John thrashes him for the slap.

He uses his belt. Dean's glad of that. Omegas don't get hit. Omegas are disciplined with words and hard voices.

Alphas are strong, ferocious things -- they need physical reprimand (as Dad has told him) -- and so when the end of the belt lashes once, twice, thrices over Dean's nape he bites his tongue and says nothing.

It leaves a red welt: a stripe as vivid as sunset.  

"I wish your mother was still here," says John. "She would know what to do with an omega-boy. Thought you were meant to be easy. Dean-o you're impossible."

And that's something Dean's glad of as well.

 

 

\--

 

Sam's presenting, and Dean's fucking terrified.

He's sixteen. Sam's twelve. It's too soon. He's so fucking young. He's so small --

Except he's not. Not anymore. Sam's grown four inches in a month -- no fucking joke, they've been marking it off -- and he's in perpetual agony, cringing from muscle cramps and popping paracetamol like candy.  

He's also ravenous. Eating all the time, whatever he gets his hands on -- their food bill has more than tripled.

And, worse of all, he's losing his teeth.

The first one slides out in the shower. Sam comes out with a tooth trapped between thumb and index finger, and a swirl of red at the corner of his mouth.

Dean's blood chills in his veins. He's not in his body, not anymore; he's watching from the end of a very long tunnel.

The blood; the ivory of the tooth, the root tinged scarlet, a scrag of Sam's flesh clinging to it.

"I feel the new ones coming through," says Sam. There's something like wonder in his eyes.

Not all alphas lose their teeth before presenting. It can take years for the new, sharp ones to slide into place.

But no omega-to-be loses teeth.

 

\--

 

Dad is so proud.

He holds Sam's upper lip, peers at the gap like it holds the secret to the universe rather than the smallest well of blood, and grins, broad, showing his own barbed set of brutal, alpha teeth.

"You're gonna be a little alpha Sammy," he coos. "Time to tell you what that means."

Dad takes Sammy hunting for a weekend.

Dad's never taken Dean out on his own. Sammy's too little, Dad had said, you have to look out for him.

Those days are dead.

That weekend, Dean discovers the singular joys of whisky.

 

\--

 

The Monday after the weekend, the alpha-only hunting trip, and Sam nudges Dean awake. It's the blue hour of dawn, just before the sun, and everything is still --  the night shift is going to bed, the day shift is yet to rise, and Dad's passed out drunk. Again.

"Dean-o?" says Dean's baby brother. He's got a mouth full of bloody gaps, dark shadows hanging beneath brightening eyes. He doesn't look especially threatening. Doesn't look like a pack leader in the making.

He smells of alpha though. Smells like tarmac cooking in the midday sun, like copper and dark chocolate and dry, dead earth.

Smells like Dad.

"What?" snaps Dean. He's pissed. He's got a headache the size and shape of Utah, and his throat is gluey with the residue of booze. He's supplanted, and he knows it.

An omega son might do to lead the hunt for a little bit, but when there's an alpha blooming fresh, ready to get his teeth into the kill?

Well.

Age doesn't matter then. Take-care-of-Sammy doesn't matter then, because Sammy's an alpha now, and Dean is superfluous.

_(Rhonda Hurley, all those years ago: what's the point? You're not even a carrier.)_

"Dad told me some stuff," says Sammy. When he opens his mouth, the scent of blood curls out. "About, uh. About being an alpha. And about pack and -- and about you. And you're an omega, and apparently I need to take care of you -- "

Dean shows his teeth. They are blunt, and neat, and even.

" -- but but Dean," says Sam, hurrying along, bright-eyed with worry, smelling of --

\--fear?--

\-- and he reaches out, curls his fingers into the duvet, tugs down. The cold air strikes Dean's chest, but the cold is soon replaced by fever-warm little Sammy.

_(not so little.)_

Sam crowds Dean like he did when he was seven and frightened. He pushes his head under Dean's chin, which results in Dean craning his head back to accommodate -- Sam's arms and legs tangle in Dean's so thoroughly that an onlooker would have to sit down and work out what limb belonged to who.

Normally, Dean would shove Sam away. Say that he needs to grow the fuck up.

But things are different, and in the heavy blue hour before dawn the rules are different, and Dean pulls his brother against him, letting his fingers find the nape of Sammy's neck, rubbing back and forth. Sam purrs, a deep rumbling sound that originates from the pit of his stomach.

It's an alpha sound.

"I don't want to look after you," mutters Sam. "I want us to look after each other. You're my brother, not my omega. You're not like the others, you don't need caring for."

A warm flush of pride simmers under Dean's skin. But it's coupled by a disquieting shudder --not like the others -- and for the first time Dean finds himself thinking --

_what's wrong with the others?_

 

\--

Over the next few years, Dean learns a lot about words.

Sticks and stones, his nonexistent knot. Words have a deep and resonant power.

For example: omegas are _bitches_.

Bitches are bred. Bitches are fucktoys, hanging-off-knot-toys, no-rights no-thoughts -- nothing but heat and empty, dripping holes needing to be filled.

Bitches aren’t human, not really.

Dean once slapped his brother for daring to use that word in his presence, and he does a lot worse to other alphas for a lot less.

Because he also learns about other words, and about how words are said, tones and implications shadowing sentence like the drip-drip of venom from an unseen Arachne -- someone doesn’t need to call you a bitch to treat you like one. It’s in the face, the eyes, the hands. Like how when he and Sam are out together, and someone talks to Sam first -- nostrils flare, inhale the sharp clean scent of an omega on suppressants and the heavie, more organic copper reek of a young alpha; eyes flicker up to Sam (up up up because the bastard has grown big); teeth show, in a smile or a growl. Asks Sam what they’re doing, what they need, how they can help -- like he’s the one to be asked, challenged, threatened, regarded -- and Dean’s nothing at all.

It’s not just knothead-alphas who do it either.

(another word: knothead. Meaning: fuckhead, dickbrained alpha -- wanting only to knot something, someone, anyone -- but somehow it’s a compliment as well as condemnation -- see sports commentary, the affectionate knothead jostling between teammates, bonding as much as faux-growls and snaps.

No one ever says _bitch_ as endearment.)

No, not just alphas. Omegas do it, and that’s somehow worse -- because they submit, chins tilted, long white throats exposed -- and sometimes they go a little further, pointing hips and coy smiles and flirtation.

Shameless whores.

(another word: whore. One use: someone who has sex for money. Another use: an omega who wants to have sex. Another: an omega with the morals of an alpha.)

So: alphas will challenge, omegas will flirt, betas will do one or the other or both.

(another word: on-the-fence. Used to refer to betas. Meaning: can’t decide whether to be an omega or an alpha, snarls and postures one moment then submits. Example: the girl Dean lost his virginity to -- shy and sweet and gentle before he got her in the sack, then a fucking nightmare.)

And Dean’s learning. He’s learning about words said and not said, about how Sam’s going to keep on growing, about how Dad’s always going to want Sam at his side in a hunt.

(more words that Dean hates: take-care-of-Deany. Meaning: Dean is not able to protect anymore. Meaning: Dean has been supplanted. Dean is not the carer but the one to be cared for; Dad does not see him as strong enough anymore. Meaning: the natural order flipped on it’s head.)

(a word Dean finds himself using more: bitch.

Context: stop being such a bitch

_Meaning: I’m not like them not like them not weak, not gentle, not in need of protection. Not not not.)_

 

\--

 

The night Sam leaves for Stanford is the worst of Dean’s life.

The moon is high and bright, the stars are vicious bites of silver, and the motel room shudders with alpha harmonics. Dad and Sammy, snarling at each other. Teeth bared. Teeth like shards of mirrorglass, like thorns, and Dean’s every instinct is to quail and shiver _and get away hide the pups angry alphas will kill the pups --_

Dean fucking hates pups.

But he doesn’t wade in. He can’t. The two people he loves most in the world -- his pack -- are snarling, spitting, ready to rip each other apart. Sam’s so big now, a floppy-haired baby knothead with muscles coiled tight as snakes in his arms and more teeth than the Osmond family, crowding in his gums. Dad’s voice is throbbing with alpha timbre, with command -- “Sam, you will stay --” and they’re pack, pack, pack and pack obeys the alpha, that’s what they do.

But Sammy’s an alpha as well.

And Sammy doesn’t want to obey anymore.

He barges past Dad -- dropping one shoulder to deliberately smack him as he goes past -- and Dad wheels on him, fingers curled into fists, and he punches Sam in the nape (where he used to lash his belt, where he used to punish -- _deany you’re meant to be easy but you’re impossible_ ) and Dean can’t help the cry that tears loose from his throat.

It’s not a sound he’s ever made before. He didn’t know he was capable of such a sound: it’s not a snarl or a bark or a growl, any of the vocalisations that Dad and Sam make when angry or hunting. It’s a scream. It slants into metallic, into high registers that makes the windows shiver in their frames; a bright, impossible slash of sound that has Dad clamping his hands to his ears and cringing. Sam flinches as though he’s been scalded, his eyes flying wide, pupils blown black with --

_\-- with fear._

Yes, fear. The scent coils into the room, sour and humid and carried in sweat.

It’s a fucking awful scent, but what shocks Dean all the more is that he caused it.

His brother. His father. Both afraid, and afraid of him.

They freeze. There is a red mark on the back of Sam’s neck; it’ll bruise.

Dean wants to go to him. Wants to gentle the mark with the pads of his fingers and the brush of his lips, wants to whisper consolation into Sam’s ears, wants to neaten up his hair and tuck him into bed like the pup he used to be.

But Dad is there. And Dean wants to go to him as well, butt the top of his head against Dad’s chin, smell the smoke-gunshot-booze-home smell of him, hear yes Dean good good you did good son.

If he goes to one, he loses the other.

Dean stays rooted.

His throat hurts. His hands are shaking. The echoes of the scream die away, and both alphas look away from him, back to each other -- only the threat of violence has died away, and now they share a look of resignation.

“I’m going,” says Sam.

“I know,” says his Dad. “But don’t fucking come back.”

 

\--

 

And four years later, Dean breaks into the home Sam shares with his omega -- _Jess, that’s her name right?_ \-- and presses his face into the curtains, inhaling the copper-blood smell of Sammy and the unfamiliar, sweet scent of a strange omega.

Something dark and hungry unspools in his gut.

Violence stretches dark claws into the recesses of his skull, and for one moment -- just one moment -- he sees himself storming upstairs, tugging Jess from her bed, pulling her by her hair into the living room and tearing out her throat. Her blood would spray, high and wild and red, and paint the walls. He’d pull out her guts to, open up her womb so no pup of his brother’s new pack could live, and then drag Sammy home: back to the pack, back where he was meant to be. Pupless, mateless, he’d be forced to stay.

Dean shudders all over at the image.

_(aren’t us bitches meant to be the nice ones?)_

But then, of course, Sam hears him and pounces -- and he’s got to explain himself.

_(dad’s on a hunting trip and hasn’t been home in a few days)_

\--

 

Dean knows that there’s something wrong with him.

He’s too violent for an omega.

He wants to tear apart anything that looks at Sammy wrong (his pack his his his) and he often does.

He never fucks alphas. Never. They look at him like he’s

(a _bitch_ )

something different, lesser, something to be owned.

Instead, he takes other omegas to bed. Alphas like to think that knotting is the only thing that makes it sex -- that omegas who only fuck omegas are deviant, wrong -- but there are legions of omegas who openly disagree. And lots -- lots -- who disagree in private.

Dean has omegas who are mated, who still have the livid bite of possession on their nape; he has omegas who are fat with pups; he has omegas who are bruised and battered from getting their heat in the wrong place at the wrong time, around the wrong people.

They never stick around though. A few demonstrate an interest, but Dean’s not one for settling down. The road opens up before him, lean and endless and hungry, mile after mile of hunting and savagery.

The more he sees of omegas though-- bared throats and willing eyes, smiles and soft hands -- the more he sees himself as an anomaly.

 

\--

 

Then he meets Castiel.

And suddenly he seems very normal indeed.

 

\--

 

“I do not understand human gender,” says Castiel. “Angels are sexless. We do not reproduce, and we do not mate. It does not matter what sex my vessel is.”

Dean’s more than a little drunk. He slings one arm over Castiel’s shoulder, sticks his nose behind the angel’s ear and has a good sniff.

Castiel freezes. Dean gags.

Castiel smells of thunderheads and storm, fire and rain, saltspray and stone. His vessels scent is lost in the miasma. Jimmy Novak could be anything at all, and it wouldn’t matter.

He’s lost in the wildness and the alien that is Cas.

Which is ironic.

Because so is Dean.

 

\--

 

He denies it at first of course.

Castiel isn’t human. He doesn’t have any gender at all -- for all Dean knows there’s a tentacle squirming in his pants. Besides, any physical attraction isn’t to Cas -- it’s to the poor bastard he’s wearing, one Jimmy Novak, a skinsuit, an angel condom (what Dean will be, if Heaven has it’s way.)

But that’s not true. And Dean knows it isn’t. If Cas was wearing the face of a leper, or Biggie Smalls, Dean would still be desperately attracted to him (it would be a lot weirder, but still.)

It’s not his face that Dean is drawn to: it is the power, the energy, the lightning sparking off him. It’s how he clamps a palm to a demon’s scalp, and exorcises them in a white flare of holy light. It’s the endless, depthless wonder in his eyes; it’s the way his hands linger on Dean’s shoulders with no thought for decorum.

(an unwritten rule: don’t go touching unmated omegas unless you want to mate them.

a consequence of this rule: touch unmated omegas you want to mate, all the time, any time -- not like the bitches will mind.

the joy of being an omega: wanted by so many, who feel that wanting you is enough to give them access to your body -- whether you want them to or not.)

And it’s the way he doesn’t look at Dean and think omega.

He says Righteous Man. He says saviour.

He looks at Dean like he’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

 

\--

 

And, eventually, it leads to this:

Kissing, like Castiel is the only entity in this world or any other -- like they’re not teetering on the edge of the apocalypse, like Dean isn’t earmarked as Heaven’s heavyhitter.

He kisses Castiel, and Castiel tastes warm, wet, gentle. The lap of his tongue, the press of his lips. Dean could spend eternity mapping every inch of Castiel’s wondrous mouth.

His hands find the back of Castiel’s head, curl into dense dark hair, and tug him closer. The kiss sparks -- there’s urgency now, the hot-dirty-slick slide of tongues over each other, the grasp and pull. Dean yanks Castiel’s hair. Castiel grabs Dean’s ass, and Dean’s wet; those little oil-glands inside him working into overdrive, and the air is heady with the smell of sex; the sweet, saccharine reek of an omega.

Castiel breaks the kiss. Dean can’t help but whine at the loss of contact, but the whine grows sharp, needling into a desperate, thin cry as Cas slides his hand down into Dean’s jeans, pushing his index finger in.

He withdraws it; it’s shining, dripping. Dean flushes at the sight: Castiel examining his slick with almost scientific curiosity. The smell is brighter than ever -- sugar and honey -- as those glands work ever harder, pumping more of the stuff into Dean -- it’s starting to run down the back of his thighs, staining his jeans darker.

“Human biology is very strange,” Castiel says. His voice is thick, and rough and there are these strange harmonics to it --

Oh no.

No.

Castiel is an alpha.

Coldness runs up under Dean’s skin, sinking all the way to his marrow.

Castiel is an alpha. Of course. Of fucking course. The way he smooths his hand over Dean’s shoulders: that’s not the action of an angel unsure of societal norms; that’s the proprietorial gesture of an alpha with an intended mate. The way he stands over Dean, mantling, ready to kill anything that comes near him.

Alpha, alpha, alpha: the syllables of Dean’s heart, beating together, echoing.

Want your thirty pieces of silver Cas?

He steps back.

“What is wrong?” says Castiel. His teeth are blunt. His teeth are blunt and white and neat, and Dean’s never met an alpha without those sharp teeth -- but, then again, he’s never met anyone with that strange shuddering tone of command who wasn’t an alpha.

Dean heaves in a deep, echoing breath. Tries to convince himself: it doesn’t mean that he’s an alpha, doesn’t mean that this can’t go ahead.

He kisses Castiel. Castiel opens up for him, pliant and willing, letting Dean bite and suck his tongue.

There’s only one way to know for sure.

Dean drops to his knees, tugs Castiel’s jeans down; no boxers; his cock springs out, flushed and red and fucking huge.

Dean curls his fingers around the (alpha huge) member, tugs -- it takes less than a moment for Castiel to cum. Semen flashes over Dean’s hand, and Castiel’s cock swells up into a knot; forcing Dean’s fingers open.

Dean jumps to his feet. Castiel stands there, his cock swollen, still oozing from the head, and everything smells of alpha now: hot tarmac, copper-blood, dense and organic, rotting vegetation.

“Dean, where are you going?” Castiel calls. His voice is desperate, shaky, singing with the quavering harmonics of an alpha looking to command. Dean’s skin twinges; a low, urgent tug in his stomach, and he wants to turn back, to slide to his knees again, nuzzle at Castiel’s nape, bite him and mark him and --

\-- _no_.

Dean’s had enough experience ignoring alphas.

He leaves, and he does not look back.

 

\--

 

Then they send him back in time, because the Heavenly plan is ineffable and apparently him getting face-to-face with his past is important.  

And it is there that Dean sees his father, a long flash of alpha pheromones and blue eyes not yet hardened by the loss of his mate, the loss of his life.

“You know,” he says to Dean, as they stand beside the Impala. “You’re not like any other omega I’ve met. You’ve got this way of standing. You talk like one of us.”

Dean shows his teeth. “Go fuck yourself.”

John’s eyes widen a fraction; his lips curl up instinctively. “I was just -- “

“Yeah, I know what you were just. Fuck yourself.”

 

\--

 

Even in the past, Dean has a fucking mess of a relationship with his dad.

 

\--

 

Mary Winchester smells of gingerbread and home, and just being near here makes Dean’s stomach contract painfully.

“Didn’t your dad have a problem,” says Dean, “with you being a Hunter?”

“Because I’m a carrier? Or because I’m an omega?”

“An omega,” says Dean. “God knows, carriers kick just as much ass as anyone else. But omegas…we go into heat, we want to be bred, we -- we’re not as strong, or fast -- we don’t have those goddamn teeth.” He gestures to his lower jaw.

Mary laughs. “Of course not. But we’re vicious. And we’re cleverer than them. Everyone knows that.”

“Empty, stupid stuff that omegas say to make themselves feel better,” says Dean. His voice is clipped iron. “We say that we’re good with numbers, with words -- we say that we’re cleverer than them, ignoring that we’re also fucking -- “

“Subjugated? I know. But do you really think that being an omega is a bad thing?”

This is the only chance that Dean’s ever going to get to talk to his mother. She smells of gingerbread, of icing, of home. His stomach gives another painful lurch, and he feels the hot ugly press of tears behind his eyes. “Of course it is. I’m always going to be a worse Hunter, a worse soldier…”

“Because you’re an omega? Don’t be an idiot. Don’t you have a ‘mega parent?”

“She died when I was very little.”

“So you never got the talk. Were you raised by an alpha, by any chance?”

“Yeah. My Dad. He was, uh -- “

“A traditionalist? I can see that. The way you talk about yourself...you weren’t ever taught to be an omega were you?” She pauses. A thin, sharp smile tugs the corners of her mouth. “Right. Here’s the thing. We’re meant to raise pups. That’s what we get told. Raise pups, get knotted, all that nonsense. But we’re so much more. Being an omega doesn’t make you weak -- it just makes you different. And, honestly? The best Hunters I know are omegas. We fight to the death for our family. We scare alphas -- no one’s ever going to come between an omega and the ones they love.”

Dean thinks of that high, singing cry -- that scream -- and how Sam and Dean had backed off, frightened and wary. “Well, I’m not exactly a normal omega.”

“How so?”

“I...I get these thoughts. Like...really violent ones. I was on heat once, then I went on suppressants -- and it was horrible -- I thought of pups, of eating them --”

“Oh honey,” says Mary. “That’s perfectly normal. Didn’t you know that? Didn’t anyone tell you? When I had my first heat, I couldn’t think of anything but ripping open every pregnant omega I saw. It’s natural. We’re hotwired to care for our pups above all else, and part of that is killing other pups -- uh, no one saying it’s nice. But it’s what happens. Think of it as this leftover impulse from when we all lived in caves. It’s like alphas -- no one ever questions the fact that young alphas want to fight and fuck anything and everything, but so many baby omegas think they’re broken when they start daydreaming about killing things. Don’t fret. You’re perfectly normal. You know,” she says, warming to her theme, her pale eyes flickering over Dean’s shoulder, focused on some dim distant horizon, “when I have kids, I’ll make sure I raise them right. And if I have omegas, well. They’re never going to think they’re different, or wrong, or that they can’t be anything and everything an alpha can be. They’re never going to think that there’s something wrong with them, and no one will ever call them weak -- Dean? Are you okay?”

Dean swallows thickly. His eyes are bright, and his smile is brighter still.

 

\--

 

“Kiss me,” Dean orders, and Castiel does not oblige -- not at first. He’s standing very close to Dean -- nose to nose almost -- and staring into his eyes like they hold the answers to all the secrets in the universe.

“I understand now that I did wrong by changing Jimmy’s teeth. Sam explained. I thought that there was something amiss with him -- most humans do not have these teeth -- but I know now that it is a mark of an alpha, and that by changing them I concealed my true gender. I apologise unreservedly --”

Dean kisses him because he wants to, because he can -- but, mostly, to shut him up.

 

\--

 

“You are beautiful,” says Castiel. He has three fingers inside Dean, pulling them out, staring at the strings of lubrication that dangle from them -- pearlescent, antiseptic, designed to both make penetration easier and to reduce the risk of infection. “You are a masterpiece.”

Dean wants to say something equally touching, but all he can manage is a high, desperate whine -- it’s a sound he’s never made before, but then again he’s never been in this position before: on his hands and knees, Castiel behind him, kissing and nibbling on the jut of his spine, working fingers in deeper and deeper, alternating strokes on his prostate (he sees white and wild fire) and nudges against his oil glands, which feels even better.

Dean’s keening. Dean’s mewling, gasping, canting his hips up -- presenting, begging with every line of his body --

And that’s when he thinks of Sam.

He doesn’t normally think of Sam in the throes of passion -- no matter what the internet thinks -- but he remembers, years ago, a baby alpha with a mouth full of blood --

_I don't want to look after you, mutters Sam. I want us to look after each other._

\-- and he laughs -- he can’t help it -- he’s never been happier. Because he understands. He’s an omega, and Cas is his alpha, and they are together for the rest of their lives. They are mates, they are together, and it’s not about one owning the other; it’s not about him being an anomaly; it’s not about omegas being weak (they are not) or alphas being strong (they are not).

It’s about him. Him and Cas.

He spins around, grabs Cas by his hair and flips him onto his back. Climbs onto his chest, kissing him with the fervour of a madman; open-mouthed and sloppy and inelegant, alternating pushes of his tongue with bites on Cas’s jaw. He whispers I love you and you’re mine and i am yours into Castiel’s skin -- and he’s wet, open, ready -- and when he sinks down onto Castiel it feels like the universe has aligned, just for them.

Castiel gasps aloud. “Oh Dean,” he breathes, reverence shaking his voice.

Dean braces his hands on Castiel’s chest, lifts himself up a few torturous inches, and lets himself slide down again. He does it again. And again.

Castiel grabs Dean’s hips and helps him: lifting him, dragging him down, thrusting his hips up off the bed, slamming his cock home.

He knots very quickly. Of course he does. He’s basically a virgin, and Dean is one fine piece of ass (according to Dean.)

Dean sees stars.

 

\--

 

“You blacked out,” says Cas. There’s wonderment in his voice. His eyes shine.

Dean -- blurry with fatigue, loose-limbed with pleasure -- bites his neck, as hard as he can. He tastes sweat, salt -- and then blood, and he clings as Castiel scrapes fingernails down his back.

“This is a human ritual,” says Castiel. “Correct?”

Dean releases, and drags his tongue over the mark he made. It’s deep, purpling already, a real son-of-a-bitch bruise -- and if Castiel chose to he could wish it away with a thought.

Castiel does not wish it away.

He’s still jammed inside Dean. It takes a little wiggling -- which sets off a spasm of aftershocks inside Dean, and he mewls -- but Castiel gets to the nape of Dean’s neck, brushes aside his sweat damp hair and bites down as well, sealing his claim and cementing the bond.

“You’re mine,” says Dean, as Castiel laps at the blood oozing from his neck.

“Yes,” says Castiel, gravely. “And you are mine.”

There’s still a world to save, of course.

But Dean can finally answer that question he posed himself, so long ago:

_I’m an omega, and I’m fucking awesome._

 

 

 


End file.
